AI-powered scams are hitting small businesses, creating ripple effects for buyers
Sora Shimazaki / Pexels
AI-powered scams are no longer just a nuisance. They are quietly becoming a cost problem that everyday shoppers end up paying for.
A new survey by the Identity Theft Resource Center highlights how small businesses are being hit by increasingly sophisticated cyber scams. Many of them powered by artificial intelligence, and the losses incurred by the businesses are now trickling down to customers in the form of higher prices.
4 out of 5 small businesses reported they were hit by a cyberscam or breach in the past year, showing how widespread the problem has become. Of those breached, 41% said AI was the root cause of a recent attack.
The issue is not just the volume of scams, but how believable they have become. AI tools are helping criminals craft emails, invoices, and messages that look and sound legitimate, often mimicking real suppliers or trusted partners.
According to the TechXplore report, these scams are “more convincing than ever,” making it harder for small businesses to spot fraud before money is lost.
How AI scams are hurting small businesses and customers
Unsplash
Small businesses are particularly vulnerable because they often lack dedicated cybersecurity teams. When a scam succeeds, the financial hit can be severe. One expert quoted in the report said businesses are facing losses that are “no longer rare or minor,” forcing owners to make tough choices to stay afloat.
Those choices often affect customers. To recover stolen funds, businesses may raise prices, cut back on services, or add extra fees. As the report notes, the cost of cybercrime is increasingly “being passed on to buyers who have no idea it is happening.” Customers may never know that a slightly higher bill or delayed service is tied to a scam that happened weeks earlier.
Aerps.com / Unsplash
Scammers have already abused AI hype to trick thousands into downloading fake ChatGPT apps and paying for what was essentially a bogus subscription. Later, OpenAI had to step in and crack down on scammers using its tools for fraud and other deceptive activity.
The report also points out that AI has lowered the barrier for scammers. Off-the-shelf cyberscam kits are now available for the price of Netflix, allowing even inexperienced criminals to run large-scale fraud campaigns and target more businesses at once.
For consumers, the impact is indirect but real. Even if you never fall for a scam yourself, you may still feel its effects at checkout. As AI-driven fraud continues to rise, the hidden cost of cybercrime is becoming part of everyday spending, whether people realize it or not.
Manisha likes to cover technology that is a part of everyday life, from smartphones & apps to gaming & streaming…
You could see faster AMD Ryzen AI Max chips soon
New leaks suggest Ryzen AI Max 400 “Gorgon Halo” could land with slicker performance.
AMD appears to be working on a refreshed version of its Ryzen AI MAX 400 family, codenamed “Gorgon Halo”. According to recent leaks by VideoCardz, this next-gen refresh targets faster performance for Ryzen-powered machines, especially those focused on AI workloads and integrated graphics.
The rumored Gorgon Halo series would essentially be a clock-bumped iteration of the current Strix Halo-branded processors, with the same core counts but higher boost speeds on both the CPU and Radeon iGPU sides. Additionally, it’ll also add support for faster LPDDR5X-8533 memory to further improve responsiveness and performance under AI-heavy workloads.
Read more
Adobe Acrobat now lets you edit PDFs by chatting with its AI Assistant
No need to dig through menus to find the right tool.
Alongside new AI-powered features that turn PDFs into podcasts and presentations, Adobe’s latest Acrobat update introduces a handy conversational editing tool. Similar to the document editing capabilities Anthropic added to its Claude chatbot last year, Acrobat’s AI Assistant now lets users perform essential PDF tasks using natural-language prompts.
Adobe says that the chat-based AI in Acrobat now offers a smarter and faster way to edit PDFs. Users can remove pages, text, comments, and images, add e-signatures and passwords, and handle other tasks simply by chatting with the AI. Instead of digging through menus or remembering where specific tools live, users can simply type what they want done and let the AI handle the edit.
Read more
AI coding work is shifting fast, and your career path may split
A new Science-backed analysis finds AI-assisted code is accelerating, but the biggest gains land with seasoned developers, not newcomers, changing how you should skill up.
AI coding work is shifting fast, and the upside isn’t landing evenly.
A study published in Science suggests AI-assisted coding is now woven into everyday software creation on GitHub. The authors tracked Python development over time and used a purpose-built detector to flag code that likely came from generative assistants such as ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot.
Read more
